21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015

Old digital tactics and mastering individual channels are being overcome by the need to create a common brand experience across the digital experience on and offline. Customers expect to access and consume information across platforms, apps and devices and in order for brands to “be the best answer” wherever buyers are looking, they’ll need to figure out what’s next and where to focus.

What’s important for digital marketing in 2015??

21 marketing brain power and experience represented by brands like Cisco, IBM, Dell, Google, Intel, Marketo and LinkedIn as well as industry thought leaders like David Meerman Scott, Ann Handley, Jay Baer, Ekaterina Walter, Mark Schaefer, Ardath Albee, Brian Clark and many more have identified some amazing digital marketing trends in 2015.

Jay Baer – President, Convince & Convert
It’s already happening, but 2015 will be the year of paid amplification. With content marketing reaching near-ubiquity, the success pendulum will swing toward boosting consumption of content. That will put a new focus on math, testing and optimization as content production and content distribution become equally important.

Mark Schaefer – Executive Director, Schaefer Marketing Solutions
As far as 2015, there is a vast change on our horizon that will be led by augmented reality and wearable technology. This change will be so profound in fact, that I think we will look back at this revolution as something that is as important as the Internet itself.

By the end of 2015, wearable technology should be gathering enough steam that we will begin to see some early marketing applications. What does marketing look like when the Internet surrounds us like the air that we breathe? Fascinating to think about.

Mike Stelzner – CEO, Social Media Examiner
Major change in digital marketing: Those that pitch are becoming ignored. A little bit of selling here and there is great, but those marketers who do nothing but sell, sell, sell, are gonna get ignored, dismissed and overlooked by consumers and prospects. Get cracking folks, it’s time to actually care. That means dedicating more resources to things that are harder to track, like answering customer questions and providing more value online.

Brian Solis @briansolis – Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
I’d love to say that by 2015 we will truly see digital strategies that are integrated across social, mobile, advertising, marketing, comms, et al. But, we won’t. What we will see though is a more conscious effort to bring disparate groups to the table to learn how to collaborate across screens, channels, and moments of truth to deliver ONE experience to customers wherever they are in the lifecycle.

John Jantsch – Founder, Duct Tape Marketing
I believe organizations will go deeper into overall strategy with digital marketing – Chief Digital Officers will help organizations lessen their focus on demand creation and heighten it on organizing an end to end customer journey through digital storytelling tactics.

Brian Clark – CEO, Copyblogger Media
2015 will continue a trend that has caught steam this year, which is mixing paid media with owned media to accelerate content distribution. The best “native” advertising helps build an audience into a a long-term business asset, and that’s a goal worth spending on in conjunction with owned content creation.

Jason Miller – Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn
Coding will become a necessity for digital marketers. As the modern marketer strives to understand how social, content, demand gen, PR, and SEO call all work successfully within a fully integrated marketing strategy, the next skill is to add coding to their resume/ LinkedIn profile. The ability to understand how front end web development and coding can affect, enhance, and optimize a content strategy will become a necessity for marketers instead of a nice to have.

Adam Singer – Analytics Advocate, Google Digital analytics sophistication and (effective) usage increases: we know from research, talking to users and being an active part of the industry that marketers are increasing emphasis on measurement. Our team even launched a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) to provide a free and robust resource to educate marketers and help them succeed. An ever-expanding mix of devices and channels is creating even greater pressures for digital teams to quantify their efforts, but the technology is here and the market demand for talented analysts & data-savvy marketers has been in place long enough that 2015 is the year digital measurement finally comes of age. Smart brands have already formalized their efforts across organizations and efforts. If you’re not there it’s time to catch up.

If these trends excite you, click here to read the complete article written by Lee Odden and explore all 21 amazing digital marketing trends for 2015.

We feel most of the readers, almost 90% of them are ‘lurkers’, who do not publicly participate but only read and build their opinions based on social comments. We’ve curated these comments that not only add value but also provide insights to the community.

Claudia Vernia says Well well well, 2015 looks very promising as one thinks about the divide between message and action. The whole idea of a promise with a message that informs and is actually fun seems to be the focus. Can that be so hard as humans? Look at the animal world and see what the most popular videos of last year were, cats. How can your message be as inviting as playing on your back, playing music, looking cute and riding an electronic car in the privacy of your persons home? Seems pretty obvious now go to work!

Robin Schwartz : Thanks, Lee, for this excellent post. I’ve taken plenty of notes and will be implementing a lot of these into my marketing plan for 2015.

Oleg Campbell : Great thoughts, I was happy to see something new and different. Especially the fact that such stuff as cold-calling and telemarketing is really starting to be considered out-of-date.

Lloyd Evaroa : This post is like a complex carbohydrate. I’m still digesting the detail long after reading, and coming back a few times for seconds and thirds.

Leena Shah : First This is a Great Information Superb Article , and You hit the nail right on the head Jessica – agree 100%. , It’s interesting to me, and I understand the emphasis here is on marketing strategies in general,

Bob Herdlein : It’s interesting to me, and I understand the emphasis here is on marketing strategies in general, but not one mention of boosting accessibility or finding more efficient means to reach people with disabilities. And not about making a buck but from a standpoint of being a more useful web to more people. But again, I understand that accessibility is not the emphasis here.

deanshaw : There was an obvious one overlooked. After 6 months of discussion in a cross-functional task force, the digital marketers at a Fortune 500 will decide to change the color of a “Submit” button from dark blue to light blue. Cake will be served to celebrate the event and executives will laud the efforts as signifying how the organization has broken down institutional silos.